appear to have been in him the warp and woof of daily life. He saw truth and God. These he knew, apparently, not by processes of reasoning and. logic, but by vision. He illustrated his own beatitude concerning the pure in heart he saw God. This is a quality, possessed in lesser degree, to be sure, but still possessed by the greatest mystics. For them, too, truth is a matter, not of reasoning, but of vision. If one cannot perceive truth in a like immediate way, the mystic has no adequate argument with which to persuade him nothing but the authority of his own insight. How characteristic this was of Jesus his hearers noted early in his ministry. "He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes" (Matt. 7:29).

This note of immediacy and authority is found on nearly every page of the Synoptic Gospels. Two or three examples are: Even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke 15: 17); "The Kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed" (Matt. 13:31); Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God?" (Luke 12:6). These are but examples. Many more will readily occur to every reader.

Whatever the topic, the discourse of Jesus moved in this realm of immediate vision, which only the mystic approaches. It would appear, then, that, although we can trace certain moments of crises in the mystic experiences of Jesus, the great characteristic of his mysticism was his continual living in the atmosphere of the "Beyond."

In other words, in Jesus the mystic experience was not unusual, but constant and normal. Jesus was the master-mystic of the ages. No personality known to us has drawn from the Infinite so much of all that is lovely, inspiring, and creative as he. To view Jesus as a mystic is to gain a view of his personality through some of the favorite concepts of our age, a view which interprets to us afresh those quali

ties in him that made the men who had the privilege of contact with him realize that, as never before, they had come near to God.

THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL

BENJAMIN WISNER BACON

1. The Previous Question

Preliminary to the question of the psychologist: What were the experiences of the author considered? lies the question of the critic: What are our sources of information? Even in the case of contemporaries it makes a difference whether the record which serves as our basis of judgment be derived at first or second hand; and if we are so fortunate as to possess the mystic's own account of his experience it still is a matter of greatest moment whether the record was prepared for the purpose to which the scientific investigator puts it. It may be, conceivably, a dispassionate report of calm self-scrutiny, or again it may be an indignant poiemic, a protest again slander, a rhapsody of ecstatic feeling. If the author be writing for scientific purposes we may treat his utterances accordingly. We must use a different kind of interpretation if he writes as a religious enthusiast, passionately conscious of the inadequacy of language, and eagerly availing himself of more or less conventionalized forms and symbols of devout imagination.

When in addition the attempt is made to overleap the gap of well-nigh two millenniums in time, and the culture and civilization of a non-Aryan race, the need of historical criticism, and of historical interpretation, becomes ten-fold more apparent, as a preliminary to any judgment worth having concerning the mystical "experiences" of an author.

1

1

If anything were lacking to prove the necessity of such preliminary enquiry it would be supplied by a recent example of uncritical procedure, in which what is called "psychological criticism" is applied to the character and teaching of Jesus in much the same way that one might apply it to that of Moses from the Pentateuch, David from the Psalms, or Isaiah from the composite literature covering several centuries that has attached itself to the prophet's

name.

Not that a real and genuine "psychological criticism might not be serviceable if ultimately applied even to these dim, majestic figures of the past. Not that it is inapplicable even in the case of Jesus, difficult as it is for the historical and literary critic to determine the precise nature of his teaching and outline of his career. But the preliminary studies are not wanting. We have a whole literature devoted to the "Messianic Consciousness of Jesus." And in this valuable literature the specific problem of the "Eschatology" of Jesus, or his conception of his relation to the Coming Age of world-renewal, takes the fore-front of the discussion. Such "psychological criticism" is both inevitable, and (if conducted competently, in a spirit of reverence and devotion to the truth) is even ardently to be desired. For what do we mean by "knowing" and "appreciating" the spirit of Jesus, if not bringing it into nearest practicable relation to the spirit of men of his own times, such as John the Baptist and Paul, of the great leaders of Israel's religious past, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and so (by this same road of comparison) into relation with men of our own times and ultimately with our own consciousness. Such "psychological criticism" we admit to be both inevitable and necessary. But those who have made real contributions in this field, the Schenkels, Baldenspergers, Wredes,

1 G. Stanley Hall, Jesus Christ in the Light of Psychology, vols. I and II, New York, 1917.

Schweitzers, Sandays, Winstanleys and others, did not begin to build at the top of the chimney. They sought first of all as competent critics and philologians to know the nature and relative value of the documents on which they relied for their data, and the meaning of the language employed, and thus laid a foundation.

In the case of St. Paul there is more immediate reason for the application of a modest and methodical "psychological criticism" than in the case of his great Master. For whereas the very fact of any mystical experience of Jesus is widely open to question, Paul explicitly and emphatically proclaims it in his own case. At the same time there is also greater hope of useful results. For psychological analysis is obviously more practicable where the basis of study is a body of admittedly authentic writings by the character to be studied, rather than a body of anonymous, undated narratives, extremely diverse in character and notoriously difficult to harmonize, as to which we can be sure of almost nothing beyond the fact that not one word was written by the subject himself, and that their very language is only his in translation.

As it is, the psychologist, expert or inexpert, has not waited to ask whether in the case of Paul his enquiry was practicable and promising or not. The very necessity of the case demands it. Every apologist for the Christian faith, since the Apostle himself answered to Festus for his own rationality, finds it necessary to treat of Paul's mystical experiences. We have no other direct and well authenticated attestation of the central facts of our religion, no other first-hand witness to the resurrection faith. No wonder then that we have scores, if not hundreds, of attempts, more or less satisfactory according as they are based on a wider or narrower foundation of kindred observed phenomena, to classify, interpret, explain, make intelligible, that religious experience of Paul which centers upon his conversion. Historically the